This article analyses the effect of trade openness, implemented in Chile after 1974, on wage inequality. In the first part, this study analyses inequality and wage distribution in Chile. Workers are grouped in three categories, according to the educational level reached, in order to discriminate...

According to the literature, historical episodes of local self-governing institutions can explain why differences in socio-economic performances among different territories can persist over centuries. Such assumption has been tested comparing free city-states (Communes) and feudal towns in...

We explore the long run socio-economic impact of a medieval urban governance setting , the king-owned towns (KOTs). For a town the KOT status implies special fiscal, commercial and administrative prerogatives between the community and the Crown, where such as status could be renovated, modified...

This paper studies the role of industrial clusters in stimulating regional innovation and economic cohesion in Europe. Starting from an overview of industrial clusters in the EU, in which we highlight the strengths and weaknesses of agglomerations of firms, we empirically investigate how cluster...

We study the effects of service offshoring on the wages of Italian workers. To this purpose, we build up a novel data set combining information from two different sources: (1) matched employer-employee data based on administrative records from the Italian National Social Security Institute; and...